■&*■* 



S T ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



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ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

AN APPRECIATION 



Br 
HENRY C. COX 




THE ABBEY COMPANY 
CHICAGO 



, 8 



COPYRIGHT, I9II 
lY THE ABBEY COMPANY 



THE TORCH PRESS 

CEDAR RAPIDS 

IOWA 



C,Ci.A280747 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

HE would be sanguine indeed, who could 
hope to say any new thing of Abraham 
Lincoln. From the time the bullet sped 
which closed those weary eyes, stilled that kindly 
heart and gave rest to that active brain, down 
to this very moment, messengers have been busy 
bringing from everywhere incidents in the life, 
facts in the career and intimations of the char- 
acter of this God-abounding man. 

It is my purpose only to recall in a brief way 
his relations to individual, social and national 
life. There may be somewhat of redundancy 
in the treatment, for the elements of character 
which made him a successful attorney made him 
also an astute politician, a far-seeing statesman 
and a forceful man. 

Through the stress of poverty and the depres- 
sion of ill-environment Lincoln came to man's 
estate very poorly prepared for doing a man's 

5 



work. His learning was small, his manners un- 
couth, his knowledge of the world limited and 
his horizon narrow. But he had two qualifica- 
tions and an aspiration which, combined, made 
his success certain. These qualifications were a 
logical mind and a great memory, and the as- 
piration was a never-.wearying ambition to excel. 
In one of his debates with Douglas in 1858, 
speaking of his great ambition, he said that he 
reminded himself of a man he knew in Indiana 
who declared that no one in the world liked 
ginger-bread better than he nor got less of it. 
"No one/' said he, "appreciates life's successes 
more highly than I do, and no one has had fewer 
of them. ' ' He was then comparing himself with 
Douglas whose success had been phenomenal but 
whom he was soon to eclipse. 

From the splitting of rails to a grocery store, 
from the store to a flatboat on the Mississippi, 
from the boat to the Blackhawk War, from the 
war to a lawyer's office, all before he had mas- 
tered even the elements of English speech, was 
progress which prophesied retrogression. But he 
was saved by his attitude toward those who were 

6 



adepts in their profession. To the end of Ms days 
he stood in the attitude of a learner. He was nev- 
er ashamed to ask questions though the questions 
betrayed crass ignorance. Thus from Downing 
and Davis and Logan and the others who trav- 
eled the circuit as lawyers or judges he learned 
and continued to learn till he knew more of law 
than any one of them and nearly as much as all 
put together. 

No man without the logical quality of mind 
can get great advantage from the formal study 
of logic. He may learn all about the syllogism, 
the premise, the middle term and the conclusion, 
and he may even be able to discern between a 
genuine and a spurious argument, but if he lack 
in the logical mind this knowledge will avail him 
little. Lincoln never had the advantage of the 
logic of the schools but it is hard to find a man 
whose sentences show more of the law of natural 
sequence than do his. His manner was severely 
logical and his style, taking counsel of his musi- 
cal ear, became as chaste as that of Addison. 

When one reflects that he had spent his youth 
and early manhood among a people whose speech 

7 



was a dialect his nicety in the choice of words 
and his power in the collocation of them are 
simply bewildering. But this is capable of ex- 
planation when it is remembered that he had 
early formed the habit of holding himself to the 
complete mastery of anything which he undertook 
and of clothing his thought in the most befitting 
dress. 

Many who in 1859 went to Cooper Institute to 
hear him speak on the issues of the day expected 
to hear a breezy Westerner with his declamation, 
air-sawing and bad grammar. They were soon 
overwhelmed with astonishment that there was 
no buffoonery, no clap-trap, but an address clad 
in the best English which it had been their for- 
tune thus far to hear. College professors having 
in charge the training of young men in rhetoric 
and public speaking followed him about on his 
speech-making tour throughout New England 
that they might wring from him the secret of 
his power in argument and the felicity of his 
style. When finally cornered by one of them he 
could give no light upon the subject further than 
to say that it had long been his custom with any 

8 



question which came before him to bound it north, 
south, east and west, and then to try to answer 
it in the simplest terms of which he was master. 

In 1832, when Lincoln was twenty-three years 
old, he began his political career and became a 
candidate for the state legislature. He announced 
his candidacy in a speech which for two reasons 
at least is of peculiar interest. In the first place 
it was his first known public address, and in the 
second place it is the shortest speech of its kind 
now on record. He said, "Fellow-Citizens: I 
presume you all know who I am. I am humble 
Abraham Lincoln. I have been solicited by many 
friends to become a candidate for the legislature. 
My politics are short and sweet, like the old 
woman's dance. I am in favor of a national 
bank. I am in favor of the internal improvement 
system and a high protective tariff. These are 
my sentiments and political principles. If elected 
I shall be thankful, if not it will be all the same. ' ' 

He was defeated and this was his only defeat 
by the direct vote of his fellow-countrymen. To 
be sure he was beaten by Stephen A. Douglas 
for the United States Senate, but while he failed 



to carry the legislature on account of a gerry- 
mander he had a majority of the popular vote. 

Lincoln had no gifts in the making of speeches 
about nothing. In order to enlist his full pow- 
ers he had to espouse a cause the success of which 
he believed to be essential to the welfare of his 
fellow-men. When thus aroused he spoke mas- 
terfully and convincingly. Even those opposed 
to him were forced to admit his power and his 
sincerity. 

He was in Congress one term and by an agree- 
ment made with other aspirants for the honor of 
a seat in that body he was not a candidate for 
re-election. He was early convinced that the 
President had deceived the people in his claim 
that the Mexicans had attacked our troops on 
American soil, and his speech in refutation of 
that claim proved to be unanswerable. History 
has since shown Lincoln to be right and President 
Polk to be wrong. But while he was outspoken 
in his belief that war had been declared wantonly 
and unconstitutionally he always voted "aye" 
when it was a matter of sustenance of the army 
in the field. 

10 



Lincoln was as honest in his political beliefs 
as he was in his business dealings with his fellows, 
and he was affectionately styled "Honest Abe 
Lincoln' ' long before there was any recognition 
of the fact that he was a great force among men. 
He spoke to establish the truth, not to confute an 
opponent. 

As an attorney he was particularly successful 
before juries. This was due to his skill in mak- 
ing hard things appear simple and to the fact 
that men had faith in his integrity. He would 
not deceive or befuddle a jury even to win a case. 
On one occasion his client deceived him and as the 
case proceeded he found justice to lie on the other 
side. He limped and halted and finally appealed 
to the jury to deal as leniently as they could find 
it in their hearts to do, left the court room and 
was found by those who followed soon after to 
the hotel industriously washing his hands. He 
said he had besmirched them in that case and he 
wanted to get them clean again. 

I know of no word, unless it be prevision, which 
will carry the idea I have of Lincoln's peculiar 
quality of seeing the future good, and choosing 

11 



the hope of it in place of present gain. When 
the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates were on 
Douglas submitted some questions to Lincoln for 
his public answer. Lincoln answered these ques- 
tions fully and unequivocally and then prepared 
a list for submission to Douglas. Among the 
questions prepared was the now famous one: 
"Can the people of a United States Territory, 
in any lawful way, against the wish of any citizen 
of the United States, exclude slavery from its 
limits prior to the formation of a state constitu- 
tion ?" 

Lincoln passed the questions over to a coterie 
of Republican state leaders for their considera- 
tion before he should submit them openly for 
Douglas to answer. They all urged him not to 
ask the question quoted. They told him that 
Douglas would answer "Yes," that that would 
satisfy Illinois Democrats and lose Lincoln the 
senatorship. Lincoln was inexorable and the 
dreaded question remained on the list. He showed 
them that whichever way the question was 
answered, the reply would divide the Democracy 
of the country and Douglas would fail of election 

12 



to the presidency in 1860. Said he, "I am after 
larger game; the battle of 1860 is worth a hun- 
dred of this." 

As Lincoln anticipated, Douglas answered the 
mooted question so adroitly as not to offend the 
democrats of Illinois, but he divided the Democ- 
racy of the country, won the senatorship and 
gave Lincoln the presidency in 1860. Had Lin- 
coln taken the advice of his friends he might 
have won his seat in the Senate, but Douglas 
would have gone into the canvass in 1860 with a 
united Democracy and carried the electoral vote. 
This seeing far in advance of any vista possible 
to ordinary men was a characteristic peculiar to 
Abraham Lincoln. 

It was not till these debates were well on that 
the people of Illinois and elsewhere began to ask 
each other, "Is it possible that this Lincoln is a 
great man?" While they were debating the 
question there came a letter from an Eastern 
statesman saying, ' ' Who is this man that is reply- 
ing to Douglas in your state? Do you realize 
that no greater speeches have been made on public 
questions in the history of the country ; that his 

13 



knowledge of the subject is profound, his logic 
unanswerable, his style inimitable ? ' ' The dawn 
of belief opened into the full day of certainty 
during the contest of 1858, and the meridian of 
that day lighted the path of Abraham Lincoln to 
the threshold of the White House in 1860. 

Lincoln entered upon his duties as President 
of the United States with but little experience in 
public affairs, in times the most trying and criti- 
cal since the government was established, and 
with a cabinet each one of whom was fully per- 
suaded that he was a far greater man than the 
President himself. That this was certainly true 
of one member, at least, is shown by a screed sub- 
mitted to the President by the Secretary of State, 
on April 1st, 1861. It was entitled, "Some 
thoughts for the President's consideration, April 
1, 1861." 

The paper charged that a month had gone by 
without a policy, domestic or foreign; it urged 
the necessity of shifting the question from one 
against or about slavery to one upon union or 
disunion ; it counseled the abandonment of Fort 
Sumter but the re-enforcement of Fort Pickens ; 

14 



it demanded that Great Britain, France and 
Spain be called on for a catagorical answer and 
that if the answer was not satisfactory war be 
declared at once against all three; it was inti- 
mated that in case this policy was adopted some 
one must assume the responsibility of enforcing 
it; and it was slyly suggested that while it was 
not in his department he neither sought to avoid 
nor to assume responsibility. 

Almost any one else in similar circumstances 
would not have brooked the insult but would 
have called upon the secretary at once for his 
resignation. But after he had written the fol- 
lowing reply Lincoln laid it away and never 
spoke of it again, not even to his private secre- 
tary. Years after his death it was found among 
his papers and brought to light by Nicolay and 
Hay, in their Life of Lincoln. 

Mr. Lincoln wrote : 

Hon. Wm. H. Seward, 

My dear Sir: Since parting with you I have been 
considering your paper dated this day and entitled 
'Some thoughts for the President's consideration \ The 
first proposition in it is, 'First, We are at the end of 

15 



a month's administration, and yet without a policy 
either domestic or foreign/ 

In the beginning of that month, in the inaugural, 
I said, 'The power confided to me will be used to hold, 
occupy and possess the property and places belonging 
to the government, and to collect the duties and im- 
posts. ' This had your distinct approval at the time; 
and, taken in connection with the order I immediately 
gave General Scott directing him to employ every means 
in his power to strengthen and hold the forts, comprises 
the exact domestic policy you now urge, with the single 
exception that it does not propose to abandon Fort 
Sumter. 

Again, I do not perceive how the re-inforeement of 
Fort Sumter would be done on a slavery or party issue, 
while that of Fort Pickens would be on a more national 
and patriotic one. 

The news received yesterday in regard to St. Dom- 
ingo certainly brings a new item within the range of our 
foreign policy; but up to that time we have been pre- 
paring circulars and instructions to ministers and the 
like, all in perfect harmony, without even a suggestion 
that we had no foreign policy. 

Upon your closing propositions, — that i whatever 
policy we adopt there must be an energetic prosecution 
of it. For this purpose it must be somebody's busi- 
ness to pursue and direct it incessantly. Either the 
President must do it himself, and be all the while active 
in it, or devolve it on some member of his cabinet. Once 

16 



adopted, debate on it must end, all agree and abide, ' — I 
remark that if this must be done I must do it. When 
a general line of policy is adopted I apprehend there 
is no danger of its being changed without good reason, 
or continuing to be a subject of unnecessary debate; 
still, upon points arising in its progress I wish, and 
suppose I am entitled to have, the advice of all the 
cabinet. 

Your obedient servant, 

Abraham Lincoln. 

It is not to illustrate Lincoln's magnanimity 
nor to intimate the low estimate in which he was 
held by Seward and other members of the cab- 
inet that this correspondence is introduced, but 
to lead up to the denouement, which is in the 
form of an utterance of Seward's made on the 
first of June, just sixty days later. In a letter 
to his wife written on this date he says : ' ' Exec- 
utive force and vigor are rare qualities. The 
President is the best of us." 

Now, it must be noted that, like the strong 
man that he was, Lincoln surrounded himself 
with the strongest men of the country at that 
time. Three of them had been prominent com- 
petitors of his for the nomination the Spring 

17 



before — Seward, Chase, and Cameron. A weak 
man would have feared to take these men as his 
advisers; or, being forced to do it by circum- 
stances, would have been overwhelmed by them. 
But in comparison Lincoln proved a towering 
oak in a grove of saplings. 

With but little study of international law 
Lincoln saw at once what must be done in the 
Trent affair and ordered the surrender of Mason 
and Slidell to the British man-of-war. This, 
without a fear of the resentment of England, if 
he failed to do so; nor dread of the clamor of 
the enthusiastic North, if he ordered their re- 
lease. The case was decided purely on its merits 
as a law problem. He showed that it was for 
similar acts of the government of Great Britain 
that the War of 1812 had been declared. 

Without any study of arms he planned cam- 
paigns like a veteran. For far-seeing strategy 
they will command the admiration of experts in 
all time to come. Could McClellan have been 
prevailed upon to move with his 100,000 men 
when and where Lincoln ordered we should have 

18 



had possession of the City of Richmond long 
before the spring of 1865. 

It is quite probable that in his busy life Lincoln 
did not find time to look into a text-book on 
rhetoric, yet he has left us a mass of material 
which would make fine embellishment for any 
treatise on that subject. It is conceded that 
three great speeches have been uttered in this 
country since its first habitation by the Caucasian 
race: the speech of Patrick Henry before the 
Virginia Convention, that of Wendell Phillips 
before the Liberty League of Boston, and that 
of Abraham Lincoln at the dedication of the 
National Cemetery at Gettysburg. 

In the halls of Oxford University, England, is 
a copy of a letter written by Mr. Lincoln to Mrs. 
Bixby, of Boston, whose five sons had been slain 
in battle on the Union side. It is tastefully 
framed and hangs in a conspicuous place in the 
corridor. It was placed there because in the 
judgment of the professors in that famous insti- 
tution it is the most perfect specimen of that 
style of composition in the English language. I 
quote the letter in full : 

19 



Mrs. Bixby, 

Boston, Mass. 
Dear Madam: I have been shown in the files of the 
War Department a statement of the Adjutant General 
of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons 
who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel 
how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine 
which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of 
a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from ten- 
dering to you the consolation that may be found in the 
thanks of the Eepublic they died to save. I pray that 
our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your 
bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory 
of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must 
be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar 
of freedom. 

Yours very sincerely and respectfully, 

Abraham Lincoln. 

Another letter, still briefer, illustrating the 
amount of matter Lincoln was able to condense 
into a single sentence, I quote here. It was 
addressed to the Hon. Francis P. Blair, senior, 
who had shown to Mr. Lincoln a letter from Jef- 
ferson Davis in regard to the establishment of 
peace between North and South. It reads : 

Washington, January 18, 1865. 
F. P. Blair, Esq. 

Sir: You having shown me Mr. Davis 's letter to 

20 



you, of the 12th instant, you may say to him that I have 
constantly been, am now, and shall continue, ready to 
receive any agent whom he or any other influential per- 
son now resisting the national authority may informally 
send to me with the view of securing peace to the people 
of our one common country. 

Yours, etc., 

A. Lincoln. 

Lincoln was remarkable for his accurate judg- 
ment of men. He made no apparent effort but 
in a quiet way he controlled the men with whom 
he came in contact, through his unerring judg- 
ment of their weaknesses. The lordly and vain- 
glorious Charles Sumner he managed by assuming 
great deference to his judgment and suggesting 
measures in so adroit a way as to make Sumner 
believe that he had conceived the measures him- 
self. In this he illustrated his farseeing states- 
manship no less than his astuteness as a politi- 
cian ; for the ends sought were vital to the coun- 
try 's good. When Grant, who also knew men 
well but was less diplomatic, came into the Pres- 
idency, he was indifferent to Sumner, and won 
his undying hatred. 

From his earliest days in politics, without 

21 



seeming to do it and without anyone's knowing 
that he did it, he directed the campaigns and 
in any hard contest stood in the breach. It w r as 
early recognized that he was the only one able 
to worst the mighty Douglas in public debate. 
In 1854 in Peoria, he gave his famous antagonist 
three hours for a speech, took an equal time for 
himself, and then permitted Douglas an hour in 
response, in order, as he said, that he might 
have the Democrats present to hear him, and 
knowing that if Douglas were not to respond many 
of them would leave as soon as the famous Demo- 
cratic leader had finished. 

The eminent services of this man in a great 
crisis of the country's history may cause one to 
forget or ignore the long and weary road he 
traveled in preparation for the crisis. He began 
on the weaker side and no one did more than he 
to make it the stronger side, but it was work, 
hard work, and a great deal of it. 

The soft answer that turneth away wrath was 
ever at Lincoln's command. For long years 
Horace Greeley had been proprietor of the New 
York Tribune and its ablest editorial writer. 

22 



While the Whigs and afterwards the Republi- 
cans were in the minority his irascible methods 
were not wholly out of place, but he continued 
his fault-finding habits after the inauguration. 
His impatient cry of "On to Richmond" was 
largely responsible for the defeat at Bull Run, 
From the cry, "Let the erring sisters go, M 
through "On to Richmond " he worked himself 
into a frenzied demand for a proclamation of 
immediate emancipation. This culminated in a 
dictatorial attack on the President, published 
in the Tribune of August 20, 1862. It was en- 
titled "The Prayer of Twenty Millions of Peo- 
ple, " and was made up of two columns of bitter 
and unjust accusations, charging the President 
with ignoring, disregarding and defying the laws 
already enacted against slavery. 

Lincoln replied to it in the following letter, 
published in the Nation-Intelligencer of Wash- 
ington, August 23. A careful reading of it wall 
I trust impress you. as it did me, with the feeling 
that it is one of the ablest state papers as well as 
one of the most temperate utterances under great 
provocation ever given to the world. 

23 



Executive Mansion, Washington, Aug. 22, 1862. 
Hon. Horace Greeley, 

Dear Sir: I have just read yours of the 19th, ad- 
dressed to myself through the New York Tribune. If 
there be in it any statements of fact which I may know 
to be erroneous, I do not, now and here, controvert 
them. If there be in it any inferences which I may 
believe to be falsely drawn, I do not, now and here, 
argue against them. If there be perceptible in it an 
impatient and dictatorial tone, I waive it in deference 
to an old friend whose heart I have always supposed to 
be right. 

As to the policy I 'seem to be pursuing', as you say, 
I have not meant to leave any one in doubt. I would 
save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under 
the Constitution. The sooner the National authority can 
be restored, the nearer the Union will be the ' Union as 
it was'. If there be those who would not save the 
Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, 
I do not agree with them. My paramount object in 
this struggle is to save the Union, and not either to 
save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union 
without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could 
save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if 
I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, 
I would also do that. What I do about slavery and the 
colored race I do because I believe it helps save the 
Union, and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not 
believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less 

24 



whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the 
cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing 
more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors 
when shown to be errors, and I shall adopt new views 
so fast as they shall appear to be true views. I have 
here stated my purpose according to my view of offi- 
cial duty; and I intend no modification of my oft ex- 
pressed personal wish that all men everywhere could 
be free. Yours, 

A. Lincoln. 

Erastus Corning and others, of New York city, 
joined in signing a series of resolutions passed 
at a public meeting and addressed to the Presi- 
dent, in which they scored him in the bitterest 
terms for violations of the Constitution; but in 
one of the resolutions they declared themselves 
in favor of sustaining the Union, of securing 
peace through victory, and of supporting the 
administration in every constitutional way. Ig- 
noring the attack upon himself, he began his 
letter to them by the expression of the most cor- 
dial thanks for their resolution in favor of the 
Union ; and then proceeded patiently, as though 
he had no personal but only a national interest, 
for twenty-four closely written pages to show 

25 



that he, no less than they, revered the Consti- 
tution and went counter to its ordinary applica- 
tion only in accordance with the provisions of 
that document in the suppression of insurrection. 
It is one of the ablest and most dispassionate 
pieces of writing I have ever read. It shows, 
like the letter to Horace Greeley, how calmly yet 
how completely he answered his opponents. 

Another characteristic in which the spirit of 
Lincoln shines forth with peculiar luster was 
in his high sense of honor. After his nomination 
to Congress, as there were several others ambitious 
for the honor of a seat in that body, he declared 
that he would not be a candidate for a second 
term. But so satisfactory had his conduct been 
to his constituents that near the end of the term 
he was urged to run again. In a letter to Hern- 
don, his law partner, he sets forth his stand as 
follows : 

It is very pleasant to learn that there are some who 
desire that I should be reelected. I most heartily thank 
them for their kind partiality, and I can say, as Mr. 
Clay said of the annexation of Texas, that personally I 
would not object to a re-election, although I thought at 

26 



the time, and still think, it would be quite as well for 
me to return to the law at the end of a single term. I 
made the declaration that I would not be a candidate 
again, more from a wish to deal fairly with others, to 
keep peace among our friends and to keep the district 
from going to the enemy than from any cause personal 
to myself, so that if it should so happen that nobody else 
wishes to be elected, I could not refuse the people the 
right of sending me again. But to enter myself as a 
competitor of others or to authorize any one so to enter 
me is what my word and honor forbid. 

On his return he found others wanting the 
place and he would not let his name go before 
the convention. With him, a political pledge 
was as binding as one made in a matter of busi- 
ness. 

Some time near the close of the fifties Lincoln 
was engaged as junior counsel in a great railroad 
case to be tried before the court in Cleveland, 
Ohio. The leading counsel for the railroad was 
Edwin M. Stanton. His management of the case 
was notably able, but the junior counsel was 
utterly ignored. Mr. Lincoln had prepared him- 
self with unusual care and expected to be called 
on at the proper time for his plea, but the time 

27 



never came. Greatly disappointed and much 
hurt at this neglect, Lincoln returned home. In 
1862 Simon Cameron was made ambassador to 
Russia and there was an appointment to be made 
as Secretary of War. Stanton had shown himself 
loyal to the cause of the Union in the closing 
days of the Buchanan administration, though he 
had indulged in some very offensive epithets con- 
cerning Lincoln; but remembering not these 
epithets nor Stanton 's neglect of him in the rail- 
road case; thinking, on the other hand, only of 
his loyalty and his ability, Lincoln sent his name 
to the United States Senate for the office. Had 
not his magnanimity been phenomenal he would 
have said, "I have suffered at this man's hands 
and I will have nothing further to do with him. ' ' 
In the spring of 1864 Secretary Chase hob- 
nobbed with Senator Pomeroy of Kansas in the 
plan to make Chase instead of Lincoln the can- 
didate of the Republican National Convention. 
How actively Chase worked in the matter will 
probably never be known, but at least Barkis 
was willin', and he remained willing till the Ohio 
State Convention met and instructed its delegates 

28 



to vote first, last, and all the time for Abraham 
Lincoln. It then occurred to Chase to announce 
that he would not be a candidate before the 
convention. Every little while during this time 
Chase tendered his resignation as Secretary of 
War, to have Lincoln hand it back to him with 
some facetious remark. Meanwhile Lincoln's 
friends were taking to him stories of Chase's in- 
trigues. In a letter to Chase about this time 
he said: "I have known just as little of these 
things as my friends have allowed me to know. 
They bring the documents to me but I do not read 
them; they tell me, but I do not inquire for 
more. ' ' 

But at length Lincoln grew weary of the strain 
and on June 30, 1864, he sent the following let- 
ter: 

Hon. Salmon P. Chase. 

My dear Sir: Your resignation of the office of Sec- 
retary of the Treasury sent me yesterday is accepted. 
Of all I have said of commendation of your ability and 
fidelity I have nothing to unsay; and yet you and I have 
reached a point of mutual embarrassment in our official 

29 



relations which it seems cannot be overcome or longer 
sustained consistently with the public service. 
Your obedient servant, 

A. Lincoln. 

In the following December Chief Justice Taney, 
famous for the Dred Scott decision, passed to 
the other side and Lincoln sent to Congress the 
name of Mr. Chase as Chief Justice of the Su- 
preme Court of the United States. When his 
friends remonstrated with him, urging Chase's 
known treachery to his chief, Lincoln replied, 
"Do you know of any lack of qualification which 
in your judgment unfits Mr. Chase for the office 
of Judge of the Supreme Court? That is the 
only matter I have any business to consider.' ' 

One will look a long time and bring to the 
bar many cases before he will find another than 
Lincoln who proved himself magnanimous 
enough to appoint to office one who had snubbed 
him in a business matter and vilified him; an- 
other who had conspired against him while a 
trusted adviser. 

No man in history is freer than was Lincoln 
from the vice so common among men, of con- 

30 



founding measures with the men who espouse 
them. However strongly opposed he was to a 
measure and however persistently he labored 
to overthrow it, he was considerate of those who 
espoused it and liberal in offering excuses for 
the espousal. Bitter as was his opposition to- 
ward slavery one may search his writings through 
in vain for a bitter word against the owners of 
slaves. In a speech delivered in Peoria in 1854 
he has this to say, which he said a good many 
times in nearly the same words : e ' I think I have 
no prejudice against the Southern people. They 
are just what we would be in their situation. If 
slavery did not now exist among them they would 
not introduce it. If it did now exist among us 
we should not instantly give it up." His mind 
was so logical that it could not think a lie; his 
nature was so honest that he could not utter a 
lie; and his was so large a sympathy that he 
could not utter a harshness. About as nearly 
as he ever came to being harsh was in a letter 
which he wrote to General Meade, but which he 
never sent — when that general permitted Lee 

31 



to cross the Potomac without another engage- 
ment, after the battle of Gettysburg. 

My dear General: I do not believe that you appre- 
ciate the misfortune involved in Lee's escape. He was 
in your easy grasp, and to have closed with him would, 
in connection with our other late successes, have ended 
the war. As it is, the war will be prolonged indefinitely. 
If you could not safely attack Lee last Monday, how 
can you possibly do so south of the river, when you can 
take with you very few more than two-thirds of the 
forces you then had in hand? It would be unreasonable 
to expect, and I do not expect, that you can now effect 
much. Your golden opportunity is gone, and I am dis- 
tressed immeasurably because of it. I beg you will not 
consider this a prosecution or a persecution of yourself. 
As you have learned that I was dissatisfied, I have 
thought it best to kindly tell you why. 

Why he did not send it is pure conjecture ; but 
perhaps he thought that, the opportunity being 
gone, mortification of the General might do no 
good, but harm instead. 

In 1862, after almost frantic appeals from 
Lincoln that the army go forward, McClellan 
urged that a movement was then impossible be- 
cause the horses had sore tongues and were much 
fatigued, though the army had been lying idle 

32 



for five weeks. Lincoln then sent this telegram : 
"Maj. General McClellan: I have just read 
dispatch about sore-tongued and fatigued horses. 
Will you pardon me for asking what the horses 
of your army have done since the battle of An- 
tietam that fatigues anything? A. Lincoln. " 
A peppery letter from McClellan called forth the 
following reply : ' ' Yours of yesterday received. 
Most certainly I intend no injustice to any, and 
if I have done any I deeply regret it." And 
after reciting the inactivity of the army, he 
closes with. "I suppose the river is rising and 
I am glad to believe you are crossing. ' ' But he 
wasn't, and seven days later, Nov. 5, he was re- 
lieved from the command of the Army of the 
Potomac. 

In 1858 Schuyler Colfax of Indiana favored 
the election of Douglas to the United States sen- 
ate instead of Lincoln ; and in the winter of 1860 
he was urged upon Lincoln as a member of the 
cabinet. Another was chosen and this decision 
was reported to Colfax by the President in the 
following language: "Your letter of the 6th 
has just been handed to me by Mr. Baker of 

33 



Minnesota. When I said to you the other day 
that I wished to write you a letter I had refer- 
ence, of course, to my not having offered you a 
cabinet appointment. I meant to say, and now 
do say, that you were most honorably and amply 
recommended ; and a tender of the appointment 
was not withheld, in any part, because of any- 
thing happening in 1858. Indeed, I should have 
decided as I did easier than I did, had that mat- 
ter never existed." He then proceeds to state 
the reasons for his decision and closes with these 
words: 6i I now have to beg that you will not 
do me the injustice to suppose for a moment that 
I remember anything against you in malice. ' ' 

Lincoln was a man of infinite humor and of 
intense sadness. Out of depressing gloom his 
mind would come as with a bound and his face 
would beam with fun. A friend once told me 
of having seen Lincoln, who was then conducting 
a case before Judge David Davis, walk back and 
forth in the aisle of the old court house in Bloom- 
ington, his head bent forward and his eyes gazing 
into the unknown, a sprig of dogf ennel whirling 
in his right hand, stop suddenly, his face lit up 

34 



with fun, walk quickly forward, thrust the dog- 
fennel against the nose of the almost sleeping 
judge, grin a moment at the judge 's startled ap- 
pearance, and then resume his walk and his 
reverie. While Mrs. Lincoln was staying in Phil- 
adelphia with the children during an epidemic 
of smallpox in Washington, Lincoln telegraphed 
to her : ' ' Tell Tad that his father and the goat 
are well, particularly the goat. ' ' While sick with 
the smallpox himself, he remarked: "I now 
have something which I can give to anyone who 
wants it." 

For long months his life had been made a bur- 
den by seekers for postoffices and consulships. 
Talking of a man who was always complaining 
that whatever was should be something else or 
different, he said: "Mr. A. reminds me of a 
mule a neighbor of mine owned in Illinois. This 
donkey was always kicking in his stall and bray- 
ing, and no one could guess whether he kicked 
because he brayed or brayed because he kicked. ' ' 

Whether Lincoln originated the apt stories 
which were always on hand to illustrate an argu- 
ment, or simply recalled them on occasion, will 

35 



probably never be known definitely, but the fact 
that his most intimate acquaintances as well as 
far-away strangers were surprised when he told 
one of them, and the further fact that they had 
a fitness that hardly seemed possible in coinci- 
dence, makes the inference ready that he was the 
manufacturer as well as the retailer. He was 
not only the most logical and profound of states- 
men but he was as well one of the most royal 
of entertainers. 

But the taking of Island No. Ten, and Vicks- 
burg, and New Orleans, had made the Father of 
Waters to flow unvexed to the Sea. The defeat 
of Lee at Gettysburg had taken the hope of ag- 
gressive warfare out of the hearts of the leaders 
of the South, and the beginning of the end had 
come. With this, in Lincoln's mind began the 
plans for the reunion of the states into the' 
mighty republic it had been, but mightier. The 
humiliation of any body or of any state had no 
place in Lincoln's thoughts, and he strove to have 
others see with him the need of the speedy return 
of the states of the South upon their ratification 
of the Thirteenth amendment to the Constitution, 

36 



abolishing slavery. Could he have lived, it is 
believed that carpet-bagism and kukluxism would 
never have disgraced our national history. He 
would have led the radicals in Congress to do 
what it was impossible for Johnson to drive them 
to do. In no place would his wonderful leader- 
ship of men have shown more conspicuously nor 
more benignly than in the reconciliation of the 
hostile forces North and South. But it was not 
to be. The fates were against us in this and 
inspired the conspiracy which laid him low in the 
hour of his exalted hope. 

On the morning of the day of that awful 
tragedy, he was unusually buoyant. While tak- 
ing a carriage ride with Mrs. Lincoln in the early 
day he spoke freely of their plans. "Mary, the 
war is over ; and as soon as the present term has 
expired well take a little trip abroad to see how 
they do things over there and on our return we 11 
settle down once more in our old Springfield home 
to end our lives among the friends of our early 
days. I wish we might plan to do it soon, but 
there is yet much to do and we must have patience 
to wait. ' ' Before that hour the next day the end 

37 



had come to him, and he belonged to history and 
the ages. 

No one else has called forth such loving service 
on the part of biographers, nor so much of it. 
Of making many books about Lincoln there is 
no end. Men are finding new illustrations of 
the great virtue that was his — the patience, the 
wisdom, the faith, the love, the hope and the 
mercy. Surely to dwell upon the character of 
this man occasionally is to make one more toler- 
ant, more hopeful and more faithful. 

It is fitting to close this brief study of his 
life with Henry Watterson 's brilliant peroration : 

Prom Caesar to Bismarck and Gladstone, the world 
has had its statesmen and its soldiers, — men who rose 
to eminence and power, step by step, through a series of 
geometric progression as it were, each advancement fol- 
lowing in regular order one after the other. They were 
not what we call men of destiny. They were men of 
the time. The inspired ones are fewer. Whence their 
emanation, where and how they got their power, by what 
rule they lived, moved and had their being, we know not. 
They rose from shadow and they went in mist. They 
came, God's mantle about them; and they vanished, 
God 's holy light between the world and them, leaving 
behind a memory, half mortal and half myth, 

38 



Tried by this standard, where shall we find an ex- 
ample so impressive as Abraham Lincoln, whose career 
might be chanted by a Greek chorus as at once the pre- 
lude and the epilogue of the most imperial theme of 
modern times? 

Born as lowly as the Son of God, in a hovel; reared 
in penury, squalor, with no gleam of light or fair sur- 
roundings; without graces, actual or acquired; it was 
reserved for this strange being late in life to be snatched 
from obscurity, raised to supreme command at a supreme 
moment, and intrusted with the destiny of a nation. 

Where did Shakespeare get his genius! Where did 
Mozart get his music? Whose hand smote the lyre of 
the Scottish plowman? God, God, and God alone! And 
as surely as these were raised up by God, inspired by 
God was Abraham Lincoln; and a thousand years hence, 
no drama, no tragedy, no epic poem will be filled with 
greater wonder, or be followed by mankind with deeper 
feeling than that which tells the story of his life and 
death. 



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